Is any journalist going to point out to Starmer that he can't believe Palestinians have an "inalienable" right to statehood unless a Labour government will recognise the State of Palestine without Israel's consent?

Journalism is ultimately about choices.  Should the public know about a story - do you report, or not?  Should the public care about a story - do you give it prominence, or bury it with a tokenistic mention?  Should the public be properly informed about a story - do you ask probing questions of those involved, or just take everything at face value and invite the population to do the same?

Large sections of the unionist-oriented Scottish media have decided Nicola Sturgeon's deletion of her Whatsapp messages related to Covid is the gravest political scandal since Watergate.  I'm not saying they're necessarily wrong to care about it, and as far as Jason Leitch's now-notorious hubristic remark is concerned, all I can say is that if you've only just noticed the nature of that man, you really should have been paying more attention.

But what is being neglected while our attention is directed towards the Sturgeon story?  Mass murder and ethnic cleansing, some would say outright genocide, is being perpetrated by the Israeli state in Gaza.  Only a few days ago, Keir Starmer indicated through one of his lieutenants that he was choosing this moment of all moments to betray Labour's promise that the State of Palestine would be recognised unconditionally by an incoming Labour government.  Instead, the commitment was being downgraded to a nominal one to recognise Palestine only when that was acceptable to Israel and only after Israel has negotiated a two-state solution.  Given that the Israeli government has explicitly stated that a Palestinian state will never be acceptable and it will never negotiate a two-state solution, the new Starmer pledge is about as meaningful as a promise to recognise Narnia just as soon as that is acceptable to Mordor.

And yet yesterday, presumably spooked by focus groups or private polling showing potentially dangerous consequences of Labour tacking too closely to Israel, Starmer announced that Palestinians had an "inalienable" right to statehood that could not be vetoed by a neighbouring state.  Where were the journalists queuing up to point out that this new statement is utterly irreconcilable with the one of a few days ago, just as so many Starmer statements and Starmer policies directly contradict what he's said in the past?  The logic of an inalienable right to a Palestinian state is that a Labour government would recognise it on day one, with or without Netanyahu's permission.  There is no practical bar to doing that, because the State of Palestine has had undisputed legal existence since at least 2012, when it was officially accepted by the UN as a non-member observer state.  No fewer than 72% of UN members recognise the State of Palestine, including several EU countries.  Labour would simply be bringing the UK into line with the likes of Sweden, Poland, Brazil and Iceland.

So what is it to be?  A Schrodinger's recognition whereby a Palestinian Embassy in London both exists and doesn't exist?  Are journalists interested in asking these questions, and if not, do they even care that the man who is highly likely to be Prime Minister before this calendar year is out is a demonstrably unprincipled chancer?

Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

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Should Israel be banned from international sport and the Eurovision Song Contest?

I think, in general, sporting boycotts and bans are bad ideas, simply because of the practical consideration that such a large percentage of the world's population live under authoritarian regimes or in countries waging unjust wars, and international sport would thus cease to function in any meaningful sense if a 'whiter than white' approach was attempted.  Nevertheless, sporting boycotts are credited with possibly hastening the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, and I do believe that was a justified exception to the general rule because you couldn't separate the sport from the apartheid - if you played South Africa at rugby or cricket you were legitimising an all-white team that clearly didn't represent the country's population.  In the early years, apartheid sometimes even had a restrictive effect on who was picked to play against South Africa, as in the Basil D'Oliveira controversy, which was plainly an unacceptable and unsustainable state of affairs.

Apartheid in modern Israel / Palestine is often compared to apartheid in South Africa, so are the parallels exact enough to justify a similar exception that should see Israel cast out of international sport and the Eurovision Song Contest?  The case can be argued either way.  The similarities are obvious enough - Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are denied their own state, self-government is confined to small, non-contiguous Bantustan-like parcels of land that are designed to ensure a real sovereign state remains non-viable, and yet Palestinians in those territories are denied citizenship and voting rights in the only state that does exist.  But there is one key difference with apartheid-era South Africa, which is that there are substantial numbers of Palestinians in Israel proper who do have citizenship and voting rights and who are allowed to mingle with the Jewish population, and can represent Israel at sporting events, etc.  The tactic is thus not to keep Palestinians out of Israeli life altogether, but to arbitrarily restrict the numbers who are granted rights so that they cannot ever become a 'problem'.

Personally I think Israel should be suspended from this year's Eurovision - if Russia's actions last year warranted suspension, it's hard to see how Israel's actions over recent months fall short of the same threshold.  But if that actually happened, the contest would probably be in jeopardy because Germany would walk out and take its money away.  As the ICJ case demonstrated, Germany has this weird notion that it has the exclusive right to adjudicate upon what constitutes a genocide for the very reason that it was the perpetrator of the worst one in global history.

Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

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Some in the SNP think this election will be "bad" like 2017 - but it could actually be bad more like 1979 or 1983

Believe in Scotland is sometimes dismissed as nothing more than an SNP front, and it's true that the last time I spoke to Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp (which was way back during Independence Live's coverage of the 2021 Holyrood election results), I detected plenty of warmth towards the SNP and the Greens, but a distinct ice-coolness towards the Alba party, which I had only just joined.  But anyone who has paid any attention to his writings will know that he has in fact been sceptical of late about the SNP's election strategy, and that at least to some extent his concerns mirror the ones held by those of us in the Alba camp.  

I certainly find very little to disagree with in his latest analysis in The National, which expresses the worry that large numbers of SNP voters could stay at home on polling day due to their party's tepidness on the independence issue.  He also wonders if warm words towards Labour in pursuit of tactical votes in Tory-held seats could be counterproductive by contributing to substantial losses in the much greater number of seats where Labour is the SNP's main opponent.

Perhaps the one comment I might take issue with is in the closing sentence of the piece where Gordon suggests that "right now it looks more like 2017 than 2015".  I take that as a warning against complacency, but paradoxically it may well in itself represent a form of complacency, ie. a belief that 2017 represents some kind of worst case scenario, and a failure of imagination about just how bad things could get.

The reality is that the SNP are in a much, much weaker position than they were in 2017.  When Theresa May unexpectedly announced she was going to the country that year, there were fears for the SNP, but those fears were that they might lose up to ten of their 56 seats to the Tories, and perhaps one or two to the Liberal Democrats.  Initially it was assumed there was a floor of 45 seats below which the SNP couldn't fall, but in fact they ended up with only 35.  The YouGov MRP projection from a few days ago already shows the SNP with ten fewer than that, which means they're on course to lose their majority and slip to rough parity with Labour.  If we were really learning the lesson of 2017 we'd be thinking about how much worse things can get once the campaign is underway, rather than wallowing in imagined disappointment about how we'll feel if things stay exactly as they are.

Today a YouGov subsample was published showing the following: Labour 35%, SNP 29%, Conservatives 14%, Greens 9%, Reform UK 9%, Liberal Democrats 4%.  OK, even a subsample that is correctly structured and weighted will have a very large margin of error, and the high shares for both the Greens and Reform UK should perhaps make us a tad dubious.  But if hypothetically that was the election result in Scotland, the seats projection on the new boundaries would be: Labour 34, SNP 13, Conservatives 7, Liberal Democrats 3.  There would only have to be a further 4% swing to Labour (ie. Labour 39%, SNP 25%) for the SNP to be facing a near-extinction event that would reduce them literally to just TWO seats.  This could end up feeling a lot more like 1979 or 1983 than 2017.

I say these things not as a counsel of despair, but to try to wake the SNP up and make them realise that they're dabbling with strategic tweaks when the situation may require a total strategic overhaul.  There's still time to do that, but they need to act fast.  Restore unity by bringing Kate Forbes and her allies back into the fold in senior ministerial positions.  Galvanise the Yes support by actually giving independence voters independence to vote for.  Relentlessly expose Keir Starmer for the unprincipled confidence trickster that he is  - and whatever happened to Brexit as a wedge issue?  Couldn't the SNP be making far more of the fact that Scottish Labour are a pro-Brexit party trying to win in an anti-Brexit country?

Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

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Vote James Kelly #1 for Alba's Committees and Constitution Review Group - here are my priorities if I'm elected

The next National Council of the Alba Party will, I believe, be taking place in Edinburgh on Saturday 27th of this month.  It will be electing members of four committees - the Conferences Committee, the Disciplinary Committee, the Appeals Committee and the Finance & Audit Committee, plus also on this occasion it will be electing members of a special Constitution Review Group.  I've put myself forward as a candidate for all five bodies, and receipt of my nomination was acknowledged, so as far as I know I'll be on the ballot form for all five.

As I may have mentioned once or twice or even seventeen times, I came within just 0.5% of being elected Alba's Membership Support Convener a few weeks ago, which would have carried with it an automatic place on the NEC.  However I then missed out on one of the ordinary member slots on the NEC, which was not particularly surprising given that there were a remarkable eighteen candidates jostling for just four male slots.  So you'll understand how keen I am now to continue to have some sort of role going forward (I've been an elected member of the Appeals Committee since last February).

Obviously given the democratising pitch I ran on a few weeks ago, I'd be particularly keen to be elected to the Constitution Review Group.  If that happens, the ideas I'd be looking to pursue are - 

An NEC wholly elected by one member, one vote (with the exception of the leaders of the parliamentary groups who for obvious reasons should continue to be there as of right).  I'm proud to have played a part in bringing this matter onto the agenda, and the leadership seem to have indicated that we're now pushing at an open door.  However, we still need to make sure we walk through that door.  The NEC is the governing body of the party and it is indefensible that around half of it is currently elected only by the relatively small minority of members who pay to attend conference.

Members of other committees should also be elected by one member, one vote.  Making sure ordinary members of the NEC are elected by the whole membership is the big priority, but I see no good reason why the same should not also be the case for members of other committees too.  For example, the Conferences Committee wields immense power and party members should be the masters of it.  At present they have no direct say over its composition at all.

An expanded NEC with more ordinary elected members.  The proposal to move to six male and six female ordinary NEC members, rather than the four of each we have at present, was a very positive and sensible one and should be revisited.

Looking at ways to give all members a vote on the most important matters.  There was a good deal of sneering at my suggestion that all members could take part in conference votes online while following the event via live stream.  The idea that it isn't even technically feasible to do that doesn't stack up in my view, however I do accept that it is unlikely to happen in the near future.  What I do think we could look at, though, is separating out the really important votes on a carefully selected basis and giving all members a say on them via online party-wide "referendums".

There's an argument that the need for transparent publication of internal election results should be written into the constitution.  Many members were profoundly shocked that the results of the ordinary NEC ballot last month were essentially kept secret, with even the candidates ourselves only receiving partial results.  This is obviously unacceptable - there is no true democracy without transparency.  It cannot be allowed to happen again, and perhaps the simplest way of ensuring that it doesn't is to write safeguards into the constitution itself.

Iron out the oddity of how the Party Chair is selected.  At present the leader of the party proposes a Chair who is then approved by the NEC.  I was a member of the NEC when this procedure was first used, and of course there was no issue because we were all extremely happy with the nomination of Tasmina.  However as a matter of principle I wasn't at all clear as to whether we as NEC members had the power to withhold approval of the nominated candidate and what would have happened if we did.  It would probably be simpler if the Chair was directly elected by members, or failing that by the NEC.  If there's good reason for it to be an appointed position, perhaps we should just be honest in the constitution that an appointed position is what it is.

I am also, of course, very open to suggestions from Alba members about other ways the constitution can be improved.

If I am fortunate enough to be elected to any of the other committees, my priorities will be transparency, the empowerment of members, the rejection of factionalism and cliquishness, and a scrupulously fair discipinary process that is never abused in the way that has sadly become all too common in other parties.

Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

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Any damage caused by a split vote at the general election will be the fault of *all* pro-indy parties - and it's the responsibility of all pro-indy parties to find a way of preventing that damage

My experiment with switching off pre-moderation in the comments section to allow for more free-flowing debate has been surprisingly successful so far (although give it time - it always goes wrong eventually!).  We've had genuine interaction from people across the different divides of the independence movement, which could make Scot Goes Pop one of the few forums where that actually happens. Generally people have become quite ghettoised on other blogs and in the various social media spaces.

One of the main points of difference on recent threads has been on the question of whether independence supporters need to unite behind the SNP at a general election conducted under first-past-the-post, or whether more can be achieved with Alba or ISP, or whether we'd all be better off abstaining or spoiling our ballots.

Let's start with the easy part - the latter would be a monumentally stupid thing to do.  Abstaining or spoiling your ballot has exactly the same effect - as an independence supporter you are ensuring that your view is not even recorded, thus indirectly boosting the unionist share of the vote and helping to take independence off the table.  Scrawling the word "INDEPENDENCE" across the ballot paper as the means of spoiling your ballot does not help in the slightest, because there will be no record that you did that - it'll just go down as a spoilt ballot like any other.

So of course we all should be voting and we should all be voting for a pro-independence party or candidate. But it's certainly true that first-past-the-post means that in an ideal world, there would be just one pro-indy candidate to unite behind in each constituency.  We should be maintaining our traditional precious advantage of the unionist vote being divided multiple ways while our own vote is united.  At the moment it looks like the complete opposite will happen, and that's actually everyone's fault - SNP, Green, Alba, ISP alike.  It's the SNP's fault for rejecting the Scotland United proposal out of hand, and for not even at the very least seeing the obvious sense that Angus MacNeil's vote must not be split in the Western Isles if Labour are to be stopped there.  It's Alba's fault for reacting to the rejection of Scotland United by indicating that a large number of candidates will be put up against the SNP in SNP-held seats, when it would have been far more constructive and strategically wise to concentrate all of Alba's resources on defending the two seats that are currently Alba-held.  It's the Greens' fault for bizarrely wanting to take on the SNP in more constituencies now that the two parties are in coalition with each other, rather than seizing what would seem to be an obvious opportunity for a sensible electoral pact.  And certainly ISP can be justly criticised for making such an early announcement on a widespread intervention in the general election, which probably made it harder for Alba not to follow suit.

As most of you know, I'm a member of Alba, and I accept the democratic decision of the party to stand in more than two seats, even though I doubt its wisdom, and if my own constituency has an Alba candidate I will of course vote Alba.  However I do think all parties need to step back from the brink before real damage is done by a split vote, because the priority in this election has to be to keep the independence cause alive.  I think the perception in Alba, at least in some quarters, is that there are other priorities, for example to put the option of independence genuinely on the ballot paper in circumstances where the SNP are refusing to say that a vote for themselves would lead to independence.  I'm not convinced by that line of argument, because when the results come in, the media and political establishment will not be making that distinction - seats the SNP hold will be seen as seats saved for the cause of independence, whereas seats the SNP lose, perhaps due to a split vote, will be interpreted as a sign that Scots are 'moving on' from the whole issue.

Potentially more convincing is the argument that large numbers of independence-supporting voters are moving across to Labour, and that they are not doing so exclusively as a crude impulse to "kick the Tories out" but also partly due to disillusionment with the SNP.  If there was a pro-indy party standing that was more attractive to those voters than the SNP, it might actually stop them drifting to Labour in the first place.  On that interpretation, the Greens and Alba would not be "splitting" the Yes vote by taking votes that would otherwise go to the SNP, but would be shoring up the overall combined pro-indy by taking votes that would otherwise harmfully drift to Labour.  I'm sceptical as to whether it would really work that way, but I accept that it's possible and we could probably do with a lot more opinion polling data to find out.

One absolutely crucial thing Alba have got to bear in mind, though, is the danger of a legend springing up that Labour only won certain seats because of Alba interventions.  If, say, there are three seats where Alba take 2% of the vote and where Labour's margin of victory is less than 2%, we'll hear a lot about Alba being "Labour's little helpers" and that will be a very difficult charge to defend against.  The real opportunity for Alba will arrive under proportional representation at the 2026 Holyrood election, and doing anything in the interim that tarnishes the party's standing with pro-indy voters would be very foolish.  Remember that Ralph Nader performed far more poorly in the 2004 US presidential election than he did in 2000, and. the overwhelming reason for that was the perception that he had helped George W Bush win in 2000.

Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Making it make sense for Kezia Dugdale

Secret SNP sleeper agent Kezia Dugdale, long since brilliantly exposed by the genius of Ian Smart, let the side down badly yesterday by posting this - 

"For decades the SNP said voting Labour was pointless because England was true blue. Now they argue it's so left wing, it'll vote Labour for you. Make it make sense."

It's pretty much impossible to make that make sense, because as a paraphrase of the SNP's position it cannot possibly be accurate.  Labour were in power at Westminster, and thus had a majority of English seats, as recently as May 2010, so plainly the SNP can't have been saying "for decades" that England is true blue.  Nor can I see any evidence that the SNP are saying now that England will vote Labour "for you", ie. for Scotland. There's simply an observation based on strong evidence that England pretty clearly plans to vote Labour for its own reasons, and that Scottish voters are entitled to factor that into their own thinking.  Whatever those reasons are, they're unlikely to have much to do with left-wing impulses, given that Starmer's Labour is right-wing, illiberal, authoritarian and militaristic.

There's also an implicit assumption in the "for you" line that Labour represents the heart's desire of Scots, and that the SNP are eccentrically suggesting that people can somehow get Labour by voting for another party.  In fact, what the SNP are presumably assuming is that voters want the Tories out, which is not the same thing as craving a majority Labour government, however much Labour activists might try to pretend the two concepts are interchangeable.  In her Press & Journal piece, Ms Dugdale says this:

"If Labour need to win 110 seats at this year’s election in order to form a Government, you’d expect at least 10% of those to come from Scotland. Call it a Barnett formula share.

Without winning any seats in Scotland, there is still a route to Number 10 for Keir Starmer, but it requires securing something akin to a 14% swing."

But that's not true, is it?  There's an additional route to Number 10 for Starmer, and thus an additional route to a non-Tory government, which involves the support of SNP MPs for a Labour government that lacks a majority.  In seats that only the SNP and Labour can win, it therefore doesn't matter who comes out on top from the point of view of a voter who only cares about dislodging the Tories from power - unless of course you think the SNP would prop up a Tory government, which they plainly wouldn't.  Labour are banking on voters not understanding that point, and perhaps they might even be in luck there.  But come on, Kez, don't insult our intelligence by pretending you don't understand it yourself.

Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

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YouGov take the Telegraph firmly to task - indirectly highlighting a crucial point the SNP need to weigh up when interpreting the new MRP poll results

Before we start this blogpost, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  The fundraiser page is HERE and details of how to donate directly by Paypal can be found at the bottom of this post.

Here's a question that has always interested me - do polling companies feel strong enough to take action if one of their clients, who after all is paying them thousands of pounds, misrepresents the results of a poll?  Some people say very cynical things about Panelbase, but what you might not realise is that Panelbase actually check in advance everything their clients publish about a poll.  Every single blogpost I have ever written about Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase polls has been pre-checked before publication - that doesn't mean, of course, that Panelbase were endorsing my political interpretation of the poll results, but it does mean that if I said anything factually inaccurate about the results, however small, however inadvertant, that would be flagged up and resolved.  Most firms do not follow the same practice, which begs the question of what they do after the event when a client says something wrong or misleading.

One notorious example was the #Matchettgate fake poll scandal of 2021, when the Scotsman (or possibly Scotland on Sunday) put ComRes on the spot by falsely claiming there was an independence poll showing a poor result for Yes.  To their credit, ComRes didn't let the matter pass, and put a note on their website explaining that what had been published shouldn't be considered one of their official independence polls, but notably they didn't feel able to criticise their client or explain how on earth the episode had come about.

Today has brought another example of sorts, because YouGov have directly criticised the Daily Telegraph for misleading claims when publishing the YouGov MRP megapoll - however that still doesn't count as a pollster taking a client directly to task, because the poll was in fact funded by Tory donors who passed it on to the Telegraph to publish.  Basically the Telegraph have claimed that the Labour vote is only up four percentage points since 2019 under Corbyn, and that thus the only real problem for the Tories is that they are losing votes to parties other than Labour, meaning mainly Reform UK.  YouGov have pointed out that an aggregate of constituency level results puts Labour on 39.5% and the Tories 26%.  This would appear to be a gain for Labour of seven and a half points, not four, but crucially Don't Knows are being treated in a special way, with an assumption that many will return to the party they voted for in 2019 - hence Labour not quite scaling the heights they can normally expect in YouGov's conventional polls.

The SNP probably need to take heed of that point too, because in Scotland allocating Don't Knows in that way will presumably have benefited the SNP far more than Labour, and whether that really reflects what voters will do in circumstances that have changed so radically since 2019 must be doubtful.  I said in my earlier post that there must be a danger that a weirdly complacent SNP leadership might look at a projection of 25 seats and think "we'll settle for that", even though it would mean the loss of half their MPs.  Well, this is another reason why they would be very foolish to think along those lines, because 25 may be an overestimate even as a snapshot of current public opinion.

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Scot Goes Pop poll fundraiser: If you haven't already, please consider helping Scot Goes Pop commission a New Year poll so we as jndependence supporters can actually ask the questions we want asked and think need to be asked.  The fundraiser page is HERE, however if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

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YouGov MRP projection puts SNP on 25 seats, two of which would be gains from the Tories

Before we start this blogpost, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  The fundraiser page is HERE and details of how to donate directly by Paypal can be found at the bottom of this post.

For the uninitiated, part of the significance of this new poll being an MRP seats projection poll, rather than a conventional YouGov poll, is that YouGov's MRP projection was far more accurate in 2017 than its conventional polling - it correctly pointed to a hung parliament rather than a Tory majority.  It also picked up on the likelihood of substantial SNP losses in that election but underestimated their scale, which means that today's projection that the SNP will lose their seats majority in Scotland should be taken as more than just a vague warning.

YouGov seats projection:

Labour 385 (+183)

Conservatives 169 (-196)

Liberal Democrats 48 (+37)

SNP 25 (-23)

In spite of suffering heavy losses to Labour, the SNP would gain Alister Jack's seat from the Tories, and they would also remove Tory representation in the Moray area .Admittedly that's technically counted as a notional SNP hold due to boundary changes, but in the real world it would leave the Scottish Tories two seats down.  (West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine, incidentally, would be an SNP gain, but that's offset by a new neighbouring Tory seat on the revised boundaries.) So as yesterday's blogpost suggested, the SNP certainly aren't wasting their time in targetting tactical votes from Labour supporters in the six Tory-held seats.

The Western Isles is already projected as a Labour gain, which demonstrates that the absolute priority must be that an agreement is reached to allow Angus MacNeil, the only pro-indy candidate with a chance of winning the constituency, a free run without an SNP challenger splitting the vote.  Similarly, the two Alba-held seats are forecast as Labour gains, and it would help enormously if there was no split pro-indy vote in those seats.

It's important to stress that an MRP poll is the exact same as a conventional poll in one key respect - it's a snapshot not a prediction.  It doesn't take into account the effect of the official campaign period which will be swamped by London-based media coverage of the Labour v Tory horserace, and will thus be the real period of danger for the SNP.  My fear is that an absurdly complacent SNP leadership could look at these numbers and think "you know what, we can live with 25, we'd still be major players", not realising that a steady-as-she-goes approach could be a recipe for something close to a total wipeout.  I firmly believe that in a worst case scenario, the SNP could lose all but a couple of their seats, and that the worst case scenario is also a lot more probable than most people believe.

Generally speaking, you'd think that a projection showing that a Tory government is on course for a heavy defeat to Labour would lead to calls for the Tories to move into the centre ground where elections are usually won.  Rather comically, though, the opposite is happening in this case because the poll was commissioned by Tory donors with an anti-Sunak agenda, and they've clearly passed the results to the Telegraph on condition that they can make their case that Sunak either needs to go or move to a hard-right policy agenda.  OK, they can argue that such a course of action might win crucial votes back from Reform UK, or even dissuade Reform UK from putting up candidates in key seats - but the danger is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and losing more moderate voters to Labour and the Lib Dems in the process.

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Scot Goes Pop poll fundraiser: If you haven't already, please consider helping Scot Goes Pop commission a New Year poll so we as jndependence supporters can actually ask the questions we want asked and think need to be asked.  The fundraiser page is HERE, however if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

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Most of the election pitches the SNP are trying out are hopeless - the exception is "only the SNP can beat the Tories in Scotland", but that will need a lot more work

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Stewart McDonald is the SNP MP for Glasgow South. Whether fairly or unfairly, he's often derided as the epitome of a Westminster careerist who wants to kick independence into the long grass so he can enjoy a few decades in the London parliament.  That makes the current situation bitterly ironic, because it's probable that burying independence is about to cost McDonald his seat and thus his career.  In 2017, when the SNP's national lead over Labour was around ten points, he held on in Glasgow South by just four and a half points.  If we assume the latest poll showing national parity between the SNP and Labour is broadly correct, he's on course to lose.

Which makes it fascinating that even as he stares down the barrel in this way, he's doubling down on his belief that the SNP win elections by putting independence on the backburner.  Perhaps he feels that what has worked three times can work a fourth time, even in more difficult circumstances, if you just "do it harder" as our dear old gun nut friend Kevin Baker used to say.  But the problem is that the circumstances are not just different, they're totally transformed, and the Scottish people are looking at Labour in a way that they haven't for years.  It's therefore difficult to know whether to laugh or cry when McDonald earnestly writes today about how the SNP can win by promoting high-minded objectives such as tackling "the crumbling of the post-war architecture of global governance".  Good luck getting a hearing for that as a third party standing in only 8% of the UK's seats when all the media will be interested in is the Labour v Tory horserace for Downing Street.  The sad reality is that if you want to be a Scottish political careerist in the current context you probably need to be a candidate for a Brit party, and that party needs to be called Labour.

No, the SNP's best hope was to challenge the prism of the Labour v Tory horserace by making the election about something else altogether, at least in the minds of independence supporters, in other words by making it a de facto referendum on independence.  Having turned their back on that idea, they seem to be frantically casting around for alternative pitches, almost all of which are hopeless.  The one that does have some promise, though, is the line about "only the SNP can deliver a Tory-free Scotland", because there is actually some truth to that claim and it can be demonstrated to voters, albeit with some difficulty because it's a complicated point.

As I've noted many times, the fact that "vote Labour on Thursday to get the Tories out on Friday" is not really an honest claim does not make it any the less compelling to voters, because it intuitively sounds correct and the simplicity of it is almost irresistible.  But if you have the means of challenging it, you've got to at least try, and the SNP do have the advantage that they are clearly the main challengers in all six constituencies held by the Scottish Tories...

Dumfries and Galloway:

Conservatives 44.1%

SNP 40.6%

Labour 9.2%

Moray:

Conservatives 45.3%

SNP 44.2%

Labour 5.0%

West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine:

Conservatives 42.7%

SNP 41.1%

Liberal Democrats 11.7%

Labour 4.6%

Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk:

Conservatives 48.4%

SNP 38.8%

Liberal Democrats 8.1%

Labour 4.7%

Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale:

Conservatives 46.0%

SNP 38.3%

Labour 8.5%

Banff and Buchan:

Conservatives 50.1%

SNP 40.4%

Liberal Democrats 5.4%

Labour 4.1%

Those numbers make a powerful case all by themselves, because people can see that even if there is a truly enormous swing from SNP to Labour in those seats, at most all that will be achieved is the replacement of the SNP as the second-placed party with Labour - it won't dislodge the Tories.  Doubtless these numbers will be appearing in leaflet bar charts in the constituencies themselves to encourage Labour-inclined voters to vote tactically for the SNP, but I actually think - as unconventional as it might seem - that the SNP need to get the numbers out nationally in an advertising campaign. The notion that "only the SNP can beat the Tories in Scotland" is too counterintuitive to really stick unless you provide a visual representation of the underlying logic, and you probably need to bash voters over the head with it again and again and again.

I know you might think "this is completely irrelevant outside those six seats", but remember that a lot of voters don't do detail, and if you can convince them that the SNP are the threat to the Tories in Scotland, they may well start to think that applies across the country.

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jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk